What's Your Number?

Everybody, as a famous Mississippi resident noted, has a price.

I've heard my friends for a long time talk about how much more Jim Hood is going to get them paid. He's going to raise teacher pay, and public employee pay, and this, and that. And he'll do it by cutting grocery taxes!

(If you cut grocery taxes, property taxes go up, especially in municipalities, because that's where a lot of their funding comes from. But don't expect Jim or his media enablers to tell you that.)

So my question is: What's your price?

What's the price of being able to defend your home? Jim Hood doesn't want you to be able to do that.

What's the price of being able to defend your business from lawsuits, especially like those that Jack Phillips has had to go through?

What's the price of not giving boards and commissions over to the people who gave us this nickname?

What's the price of only defending Mississippi laws during election years when you need some pro-life cred with the "Bible thumpers?"

What's the price of watching unsolved murders continue to go unsolved just because nobody at the New York or Chicago or LA papers cares about them? Even when the crime occurred 35 miles from Jim Hood's house in Houston?

Bet you thought we forgot about that one, didn't you?

What's the price of giving power over to someone who has no problem using his office to punish his political opponents, or those of his friends?

Oh, you thought we forgot about that one too, didn't you?

So is your raise worth all those things? When you're probably getting a raise anyway, no matter who you're voting for?

Give me your number. Because you've admitted you have one. Just go ahead and say what it is.

Stop Me If You've Heard This One

Barry Messiah nominated someone with tax problems. I know, I know...first Geithner, then Daschle, then whats her name...and now Ron Kirk, US Trade Representative, seems to have underpaid taxes by 10 grand since 2005.

I guess it was another honest mistake.

No wonder Democrats love higher taxes-they aren't paying them.

Can I Just Go Ahead and Tell the IRS...

...that I'll be making an honest mistake on my taxes this year? Surely nobody will mind that.

Thank YOU, Tim Geithner.

Normally, This Is Where They Plead With You To Vote...

...for someone, anyone. I don't want to insult your intelligence by saying that. You know from a quick scan down the page my opinion on the election.

Plain and simple, Barack Obama is exactly the wrong man.

From his tax plan that doesn't make any sense if you actually pay attention to it (because its not a tax increase if we just let the tax cuts expire!), to his left-wing judicial philosophy, to his seeming lack of concern about the threat of Islamic extremism, to his pie-in-the-sky plans to spend every dollar he can get his hands on, he's a nightmare candidate.

Let's not even touch on the cult-like devotion, the egocentrism, the Great Seal of Obamaland, et al.

John McCain isn't perfect. But I can guarantee you that spending won't go through the roof, that judges won't be making stuff up on the fly, and that the mullahs will be scared every time he gets on TV.

In a time full of uncertainty, it is not the time to be giving the Big Job to a guy whose main qualification for the office is that he speaks well.

Hob Bryan speaks Truth to Power

"These characterizations of the assessment as a 'patient tax' are nothing more than propaganda designed to induce fear."

Once again, Partisan Liberal Democrat Hob Bryan gets it, and basically sums up the House Dems' position and only hope in this debate-and frankly, the absurdity of the taxation party opposing a tax.

My bone to pick with Hob is that "Barbour tried to get them beat" in last year's elections. Um, yeah, Hob, that whole election thing? The whole point is to try to win and help your party win. And interfering in elections? Lest we forget in 2003 the challenge in the Republican Primary by Lee Tyner, he of plantiff's attorney fame, ran against Barbour. And we know how those trial lawyers feel about the GOP.

I Have to Share This With You

I was approached by a young man today who asked me why I was not going to vote for Barack Obama. I have a littany of reasons, and I shared them with him, one by one.

There must be a great benefit to being a tabula rasa. When I told the young man that under Obama, my taxes would increase, he boldly stated, "But under Obama, everyone will pay the same in taxes, the rich, the poor, everybody!"

Barack Obama, Flat-Tax Advocate. Who would have thought it?

When nobody knows you, and the press is a willing accomplice, and the public is ignorant, I guess they'll believe anything about you.

When It's So Obvious

Yeah, when very partisan Dem Hob Bryan agrees with a Republican (I once heard him blame every economic problem in this country on Ronald Reagan and tax cuts. Seriously) you know the issue is pretty simple. Agree with his politics or not, Hob Bryan knows tax code. And when he and the governor agree on something, it's news worthy (even if that newsworthy item is buried halfway down the page on the Daily Journal's website).

The reality is this: Hob Bryan is not stupid. He knows that a cigarette tax is a self-defeating one, and while it's an early short-term fix, sin taxes wear themselves out by financially discouraging the continuation of the habit. Meanwhile, there are still people on Medicaid who won't be going anywhere, cigarettes or not. While taxing hospitals isn't my favorite thing-I'm generally opposed to taxation at all-it is a stable source of funding. Senator Bryan surely knows this.

And let me interject this idea-since when did Democrats think taxes on a large business were a bad thing? Is this the first tax increase on a business that any Democrat in the state House has ever opposed?

The fact of the matter is that we have enough tax revenue in this state to cover $90 million in a given year. The problem is we've blown so much of that on $17,000 worth of mileage and sidewalks for Bogue Chitto (that the town never asked for!). It's easier for a legislator to ask for more money than it is to spend the money that is already there. Were that my employer would simply hand me more money at the end of the month if I didn't have enough.

Gas Tax Vacation?

I'll go ahead and say it....